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San Simeon photos by Juan

After a recent conference in Vegas, our friend Juan took a road trip to San Simeon, California to see the Hearst Castle. The hilltop palace was built by William Randolph Hearst, the American newspaper magnate who was the model for Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. (More recently it was the location of a Lady Gaga music video.)

Hearst was not amused, and did everything in his power to suppress the film. He tried to stop the studio from screening it. Failing that, he forbade all his newspapers from mentioning Citizen Kane, and ordered them to smear Orson Welles.

Citizen Kane did decently at the box-office and got some Oscar nominations, but it should have been Huge. Much of what we take for granted in cinema today was invented by Welles and his collaborators, notably cinematographer Gregg Toland. Orson Welles was 25 when he made that movie, and it was his first (though he was already a stage and radio sensation, having caused a panic with his War of the Worlds broadcast). He cited sheer ignorance as the source of his nerve—”There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.”

Ironically, Hearst is largely remembered today as the inspiration for Citizen Kane, one of the greatest, most influential films in history.

Kane reflects on his life. Reflects, get it? Citizen Kane screenshots from Movie Images.

But Welles’s career was badly wounded by the Hearst propaganda, and for the rest of his life he would have trouble getting movies made. Charles Foster Kane was a man who had gotten everything he wanted, and then lost it all—the same could be said of Orson Welles.

The Roman pool at Hearst Castle, not to be confused with the outdoor pool.

“The castle is a bit sad now that it is devoid of glamorous people,” Juan reports. “The most frequent guest was supposed to have been Clark Gable, who visited 42 times.”

“The longer you stayed, the farther away you sat from Randolph Hearst, who was always seated at the middle. P.G. Wodehouse had to leave when he found himself at the end of the long table one night.”

Compare the actual dining room with the one in the film. The movie version is practically minimalist.

“The conceit of the guy was not in building a castle but in building it on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere and giving it the comforts of a modern home. Indoor plumbing, lighted tennis court (first in California), heated swimming pools. Imagine the infrastructure of water, sewage, electricity that had to be built. Highway 1 had not been constructed yet so the castle was extremely isolated and difficult to get to.”

The library of the man who invented yellow journalism.

“In the late 1930s, Hearst owed $127M and had to downsize a lot. The family wanted to donate San Simeon to UCLA but the cost of maintenance was too much to bear (and there was no endowment for upkeep).”

The ornate ceiling. Hearst bought a lot of art from impoverished European nobility to furnish his castle.

“Paul Getty wanted to buy it and break up the art collection; the family refused. So it ended up with California government. I guess they had to do it as part of the estate settlement.”

Does that window give you the urge to confess?

“Randolph supposedly left control of his company to Marion Davies (his mistress, who was friends with Herman Mankiewicz, who wrote the screenplay of Citizen Kane after he’d been barred from the castle for drunkenness), but she handed it back to the family.”

“I doubt that we will ever see something of this scale built ever again.” (Don’t count out the nouveaux riches just yet.)

The connection between William Randolph Hearst and Philippine history: During the Cuban revolution, Hearst and his newspapers inflamed public opinion against Spain, and this was one of the factors that led to the Spanish-American War. Which ended with the Philippines becoming a possession of the United States—a precursor of Vietnam and Iraq.

Citizen Kane was our godfather.

Marquette Bible
Unknown
Franco-Flemish, about 1270
Tempera colors and gold leaf on parchment
Leaf: 18 1/2 x 12 1/8 in.
MS. LUDWIG I 8, VOL. 2, FOL. 126

The Making of A Medieval Book at the Getty Museum.

Having discovered Anne the calligrapher, we have put her to work on various manuscripts, including Jane Austen, Edith Wharton and Isak Dinesen excerpts.

Next: Illuminated manuscripts!

We’ve always wanted to produce hand-made books (but NOT anthropomorphic bibliopegy), and now we have a collaborator. Yes, mass production is much cheaper and less troublesome, but making books by hand is a craft. The cost of the finished book is beside the point: the pleasure is in the “trouble” taken.

Besides, efficient utilitarian factory production has not saved the print market. We might even argue that reducing book production to a simple machine process has diminished the value of the book as an object.

Granted, we just enjoy making a fuss over the things we love.

Note: We have no intention of reliving medieval times. No indoor plumbing, terrible sanitation, rampant disease, low life expectancy, bad food. For the dramas of the medieval kings, we have Shakespeare. Always been fascinated by the Plantagenets.

from Good Tickle Brain, a wonderful Shakespeare webcomic, via io9

Download the Illuminated Morte d’Arthur by Alfred Lord Tennyson at the Public Domain Review.

This is our new favorite T-shirt. We acquired it at great cost. Not that it’s expensive, but we had to lose in order to get it. Recently we challenged Rene to a Don’t Buy Anything Contest, in which the player who refrains from spending anything in a store wins. We thought we were a shoo-in, since we weren’t feeling covetous at the time. Our mistake was setting the challenge in Uniqlo, where it is difficult for us not to buy anything because the stuff is so practical and the prices so sane. We could ignore the collaboration with Ines de la Fressange because the dress requires ironing, but this Italian Star Wars T-shirt…

“Isn’t this brilliant?” we cried. “Luke and Leia look like characters in those Italian sword-and-sandal flicks. We don’t recall Luke Skywalker getting topless in Star Wars.”

“Or bottomless,” Ricky pointed out. “He’s not wearing pants.”

The shirt is even more brilliant than we thought! We’re going to wear it till it falls apart. According to the Museo Fermo Immagine blog, the movie poster illustration is by the Sicilian artist Michelangelo Papuzza.

Photo by Noel Orosa

A searing Saturday afternoon with traffic gridlocked as portions of the highway underwent repairs was probably not the ideal time for making the trip from Makati to Cubao for an early dinner at Bellini’s. You could say that it was a decision rooted in silliness. But if we behaved rationally at all times, life would not be as much fun. Less stressful, perhaps, but not nearly as much fun.

We take a proprietary interest in Bellini’s, having been among its original patrons. As Mr. Bellini reminded us, Today was the first paper to write about the restaurant (You can read the review, framed on his wall). We have seen it grow from a bare room with plastic tables and chairs into a cozy destination restaurant frequented by celebrities (Some of them have their names on the chairs).

And we can compute the rise of the cost of the living by the prices on the menu. In 2001 we had our birthday dinner there with 12 people, and the bill came to Php2500—just 33 percent more than what dinner for two cost last Saturday. In the case of Bellini’s we are happy to pay, because we can see where the money goes.

The quality of the food has been consistently high: pastas, pizzas, entrees, and the best orange cake in the city. If the large selection boggles you, go for the appetizer buffet and ask them to prepare the spaghetti aglio olio with seafood, which is not on the menu. It’s so rich and flavorful, your taste buds will thank you.

And the service has improved since its clunky beginnings. Mr. Bellini pointed out that the staff are all regular employees, not temps, and they know the menu in detail. We believe him because the waiters have been there long enough to pick up the rudiments of Italian so they can speak Tagliano (Tagalog-Italiano).

The wine selection is quite impressive—in the inner room are bottles of vintage barolo and chianti.

Some years ago we saw a Tagalog movie set in Bellini’s and were slightly offended that “our” place had gone public. Still, that exposure has probably been thousands of times more useful to the business than our infrequent patronage (It’s so faaaar). Mr. Bellini says one of their regular diners is the President of the Philippines, and P-Noy’s favorite dishes are spaghetti bolognese, Parma ham and arugula pizza, and scallopine marsala.

Historical sidebar: Mr. Bellini met his wife Luisa at Malacanang Palace in 1986, when she was working for P-Noy’s mother, President Cory Aquino, and he was covering the Edsa Revolution for his paper in Italy. (Roberto Bellini was a photojournalist, though he is sometimes confused with Roberto Benigni the Italian comedian.) “In 20 minutes I knew I wanted to marry her!” he declared. “So I asked her and she called me sira-ulo.”

She agreed eventually, and in 1999 Bellini returned to the Philippines for good. He looked for a spot in which to set up an Italian restaurant, and found the space at Marikina Shoe Expo on Aurora Boulevard in Cubao. The rent was Php100 a day. “One room became two rooms and then three…have you seen the new rooms?” he demanded.

Of course we were familiar with the inner dining area featuring The Mural of the Two Colosseums, Rome and Araneta. One of the charms of Bellini’s restaurant is its distinctive interior decor. Between the indescribable interior design and the effusive proprietor, the place positively radiates character.

Behold the Fontana di Trevi, with Anita Ekberg splashing about. (Where’s the kitten on her head?) There’s a branch of Bellini’s in Marikina, with an upstairs room that can accommodate 100 diners.

Whenever we go to Bellini’s we have to steel ourselves for Mr. Bellini’s expressive manner, but last Saturday he was reflective. “I opened this restaurant 15 years ago last March 4,” he said. “Matanda na ako, I am 74.”

“You don’t look a day older than 64,” we told him.

“I will put your name on a chair,” he announced.

When you go to Bellini’s, could you confirm if said name plate exists?

To read, hold up to mirror.

We have just been reminded by Jezebel that it is the 20th death anniversary of Kurt Cobain and the 15th anniversary of the release of 10 Things I Hate About You.

Live, dammit, live.